Clockwork | Brittana

Chapter 7

Suddenly, now that everything was official and approved, all the paperwork signed, and the memos forwarded; the atmosphere was kind of tense, anticipating the conversation at hand, waiting for two people meeting each other to become the reporter and the reported. Santana remedied that by making sure she was comfortable, in the one place in the building that she was allowed to let her hair down.

She lead Brittany into one of Clockwork's computer labs, an out of the way lab on the twelfth floor that she preferred because of the low traffic. She didn't like sharing a space with people she felt were judging her. Santana moved quietly to her favorite workstation, the one near a window. Brittany took the seat next to her. It was a large desk, with what seemed like an infinite number of drawers. Santana was well versed in each one and what it contained. Her hands never stuttered, never paused, never wavered. She had confident hands.

Brittany had watched Santana bring out a few items and roll up her shirtsleeves before she got to work. She wasn't sure what the Latina was doing exactly, but that wasn't new. She was surprised to find that she wasn't nervous to ask.

"What are you working on?"

Santana glanced up, then back at the materials in her hands.

"I'm just tinkering. I'm disassembling this so I can see how it works, I mean," she snorted, a little amused at herself, "I know how it works, but sometimes, if I rip things apart, I can figure out a better way to put them back together."

"Oh," Brittany nodded, leaning forward in her seat next to Santana.

"One of the biggest problems with our products is that they get too hot if they're running for a long period of time," Santana continued, popping open the cover to a model of tablet her company sells. "I've been bringing up the issue for the past year but nothing ever happens. I even tried to delay the release last fall, but you know... money is money, and they wanted the product out there."

Brittany nodded and watched Santana fiddle around with the next couple of parts, using an impossibly small screw driver to either loosen or pry them out carefully.

"So you're officially my shadow now, huh?" Santana asked even though it was obvious. She decided that they needed to talk about it.

"Looks like it," Brittany smiled a little, she had to admit that she was a little nervous, she wanted to live up to all the expectations that had been placed on her. She wanted to keep Santana out of Maxim.

"You did really well at the meeting yesterday," Santana looked up to meet Brittany's eyes when she said it. "I didn't get a chance to tell you after because of all of the contract stuff, but I was really impressed."

Brittany could fell her cheeks heat up and ducked her head to try and hide it, "Thank you, Santana, that really means a lot to me."

She gave her a half shrug, "I'm just being honest."

She could have been just saying it to be polite and Brittany still would have taken it to heart, because just being polite was more that what Artie was willing to do for her.

"Are we going to play twenty questions or are you just going to watch me mess around with this stuff," Santana asked only half joking.

Brittany blushed at how easy it was to forget she was supposed to be working. Santana saw her open the notebook she had been caring around since she came to Clockwork. It fell open easily, in a well used manner, slimmer than it should be from missing pages, leather bound, soft and worn. It was a well loved notebook and Santana wasn't sure anything about herself deserved to be placed in something so close to the blonde. She wasn't that important.